Our world has been alive lately with beautiful butterflies and moths flying about!  I've combined these two challenges because that's exactly how they are happening in everyday, simultaneously.

We live in a subdivision, but have been blessed with a great deal of nature around us.  We live on a cul-de-sac lot which backs up to some dense woods, and we are on a fairly new street (only 3 houses so far), and there are numerous empty lots growing wild around us.  In particular there is one to the right of us and a whole bunch of them to the right and off in the distance.  We get to experience not only the woods wildlife, but also that of the open meadows.

View to the Right of our House

And the butterflies just love the meadow, especially because it is full of lots of clover and other wildflowers.  It has truly been alive with many different types of butterflies, grasshoppers, and bumblebees!  Particularly if the day is very warm and full of sunshine.  We've had lots of those days lately which has afforded itself to some great photographs.

The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail is by far the most numerous in the meadow, the largest, and the most friendly.  These beautiful butterflies will let you get right up next to them and practically pet them before flying away, thus why photos are so easy.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

The Great Spangled Frittilary is pretty friendly too, if you remember from my post HERE.  The kids and I love the metallic silver spots on the underside of their wings.

And the beautiful flamin' orange colors on their back.

This photo I believe is of a Spicebush Swallowtail.  They are hard to photograph for one main reason...there upper wings flutter about almost constantly, as you can see by the blur.

So, we thought it most helpful to include a video.

And the prized photo of the day...a Monarch!  Boy, are they hard to photograph.  I had to send the kids to the sidelines, hush them like ten times, sit real still, and zoom way far in, but I got it!  How stunning!

This one we just recently became acquainted with, the Least Skipper.  It took me awhile to get this photo too, but finally success!

This is another one we don't see too often, the Tawny Crescent.

We also saw lots of neat dragonflies on our walk.  This one was particularly neat, the Green Darner.  Again, I had to zoom way far in to get it.

Because of all the butterfly observations lately I've created a couple of new forms if you are interested.  They are in pdf format.

Butterfly Journal Page

Taking Note of the Butterflies List

We've also been paying a lot of attention to the moths lately too.  Especially one in particular that flies during the day!  My post on the Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird Moth is HERE.

Nature Journal Entries on the life cycle of a Hummingbird Moth:

If you'd like to participate in any of these great challenges, please visit Barb at her blog Handbook of Nature Study.

The children and I were so excited to get started back up on our Outdoor Challenges, provided by Barb at her Handbook of Nature Study blog!  We will not be attempting to catch up on all of the challenges, but we definitely wanted to complete the Summer tree study.

Back at the beginning of May the kids adopted two trees in our backyard to follow through the four seasons.  Our Spring tree study can be found here.  Hannah adopted a Pignut Hickory tree and Alex adopted some type of Oak tree, we believe it is a Northern Red Oak.  I'm finding that tree identification is definitely more of a challenge than I prefer!

So for our nature walk time yesterday morning, we spent it getting further acquainted with our trees.  It was so nice to observe them all dressed up in their summer attire.

View of Leaves on Alex's Tree

"I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines. - Henry David Thoreau

We started out our observation by first looking at our spring tree photos and then tried to make a list of the differences we saw.  They both noticed the same things:  the leaves were much larger and more full; the trees had the appearance of being larger and we discussed that was probably due to the leaves being so thick on the trees; more growth around the bottom of the trees such as moss, plants, wildflowers, and Hannah's tree was generous in giving us leaves and pignuts to observe.

Hannah's Pignut Hickory Tree

 Pignut Hickory Leaves and Nuts

She also observed the very noticeable poison ivy growing up the trunk!

View up Top of the Pignut Hickory

This is a close-up picture of the bark of the Pignut Hickory.  She took a magnifying glass and observed lots of little critters running upon it.

This is a photo of Alex's Red Oak.  It's hard to see in the photo, but it's the one directly in the middle.

View up Top of Northern Red Oak

They also both measured the width of the trunk of their trees.  Hannah's measured 34" around, and Alex's was 44.5" around.

While we were out there we also went searching for a tree that had some damage on it to do some observation.  It didn't take long to find one.

We used an activity I found in Nature in a Nutshell for Kids, by Jean Potter and discussed the factors that can be responsible for tree damage.  These factors are weather conditions, fires, people, and animals.  Then we learned that when a tree is damged, it first leaks sap from the wound opening, much like we do when we bleed.  And then, in most cases, a callus quickly forms at the edges which keeps the sap from oozing out.  Sounds like us too.  If the edges are jagged, the opening may never close completely and large wounds form permanent scars on the surface.  You can see these as knots in the tree's bark.  We tried to make our own conclusions about what may have happened to this tree (the above and below photo are the same tree, it has suffered some significant damage).

Here are few more things we observed while we were out on our walks today and yesterday.

Alex is holding a cicada nymph shell.  Cicadas are Alex's favorite insect!  So this was a grand discovery!

A dead tree knocked down by the severe storm we had the previous night.

Two new wildflowers were discovered yesterday.  You can read about that in my previous entry or click here.  And today we discovered yet another new one!  They certainly do love the rain we've had!  I must update my slideshow!

Hairy Hawkweed

Today, the kids both completed nature journal entries for their tree studies.  Hannah was the only one who wanted me to share hers. :)

She also completed one from our nature walk today.

Tomorrow I have a very NEAT arts and music project which will tie in quite well with our nature walk we will take in the morning.  Stay tuned!  Here's a preview:  what do Georgia O'Keefe, watercolors, summer nature, flowers, and Antonio Vivaldi have in common?

In the last week, we have been on several wildflower walks!  Each time the rain would let up, we've been out there discovering new flowers.  And truly, everytime we go out there's a new one to identify.  It has been so much fun for us!   There really is so much more to knowing the names of things in nature.  Everytime we've discovered a new one since the beginning of spring I've taken a photo.  And just recently I put them all together in the slide show at the top of my blog.  It's an almost daily occurrence for the kid's to come running up to me shouting "I've found a new flower!"

Our newest one was just found today, the Deptford Pink.  Unfortunately Alex had grabbed and plucked the only bloom there was before I could stop him.  I was able to put it in a little container of water. 

Hannah and I both choose the Deptford Pink to illustrate.  It has such beautiful "hot pink" petals.

Hannah's Journal Entry

My Journal Entry

Alex chose the Ox-Eye Daisy to illustrate.

He drew this in about 20 seconds, and the next thing I knew he was headed out the door with the butterfly net!  It wasn't long before Hannah joined him, and they brought me this beautiful little butterfly.  We unfortunately weren't able to identify it.

We also wen't outside with my new tree identification field guide and were finally able to identify Hannah's tree that she chose to journal about through the seasons.

Pignut Hickory Tree

The leaves on the big tree were too far up, but a little walk in the woods produced a smaller Pignut Hickory that we could get a sampling of leaves from.  And, as a bonus we found a pignut right below the tree to observe.  Hannah did a leaf rubbing after we came inside to put in her journal.

It was so easy to identify with this new guide, Identifying Trees - An All-Season Guide to Eastern North America, we love it!  It has closeup pictures of the bark, leaves and nuts.  It was so easy to for me and the kids to use.

I wanted to share this beautiful photo.  This was taken from the spot in the woods where we found the tree.  Ahhhh, I could have sat there all day!

After coming back inside the nature fun wasn't over yet.  While sitting on the couch reading a book, Hannah jumped up and snapped this funny photo of an Fox Squirrel making his way up the pole for a bite of suet.

And then, just after we were sitting back down to read again, guess who showed up at our feeders?  An Indigo Bunting!  Hannah, with her heart beating fast, took a great photo!  You can click on the image for full-size.

It's truly a rare treat to see them at the feeders because the guides say they only will come to them before insects become plentiful, and they are only in our area in Spring and Summer.  And just moments later the female came too!  How exciting!  She wouldn't stay still long enough for a photo though.

So much for finishing reading our book!  I'm going to have to turn that couch around so we can't see out the window!

If you'd like to participate in these wonderful Green Hour Challenges, visit Barb at Handbook of Nature Study.

Due to getting behind on practically everything this week, I've tried to combine challenges #13 and #14.  We've certainly been out in nature when there was an opportunity, but downpours of rain and cooler temperatures have kept us inside too much.  We had already accomplished flower pressing in recent weeks, so isn't wasn't hard to combine the challenges.

This morning, before even more rain came, we headed down to the wood's edge with old clothes and muddy shoes on determined to spend some "quiet" time in nature (well at least "I" wanted it to be quiet lol).  And have nature time we did!

This was the view from where we were looking up at the back of our house.

We went to the kid's "secret place" that they play in the woods at the edge of our backyard.  We had moved an old plastic seat down there to have a nice comfy place to sit and draw and look at our field guides and also to enjoy the fantastic views. 

There was honeysuckle bushes all around us, so the air smelled sweet and thick with it.  So we decided to use one of the honeysuckle blooms to observe and try to find the plant parts.

We quickly found out that with this delicate flower, it as going to be detail work, but surprisingly we were able to identify most of the parts using this great flower parts guide that Barb had pointed us to.

The little, flattish yellow things are the anthers on top of the skinny filaments; the roundish green/yellow balls are the stigmas (we think); and we even think we saw where the nectary is (where the sweet nectar is produced).

We also observed a Philadelphia Fleabane wildflower, they are in great abundance around us now too.  After reading a little about them, we talked about how the flower buds stay bowed down until they bloom and then stand up tall!  Neat!  If you look closely at this picture, hopefully you can see the ones that are not bloomed yet, bowing down.

SInce these are in such abundance right now, Hannah's chose to do a nature journal entry on this beautiful wildflower.

Alex spent part of his nature time working on his pretend farm and turning over rocks in the creek which made Mom flinch each time (yes, I had warned him about the possibility of finding snakes)!

He chose to draw some of the trees we observed while out there.  Which lead to a great conversation.  We discussed about the veins in a very large maple leaf we found and how they carry water to the whole leaf.  Then he asked how old the big maple tree was, to which I replied I'm not sure, but it is definitely older than me.  He snickered at that!  And then that lead to him asking me if the Earth was 2,008 years old to which lead to a whole discussion about the timeline and when Christ came, when man was created, etc.  See...nature study leads to all sorts of discussions, including History!  I can't tell you how many times this has happened.

We also saw lots of Eastern Tent Caterpillars.  They are all over the place right now, one even tried to hitchhike back in the house on my shirt!  The kids have recently collected a few, one of which has already gone into it's cocoon.  They turn into Eastern Tent Moths.  You can click on the image and hit enlarge to get a better view.

Hannah spent some free time collecting materials to make a "fairy house".  I will post some detailed pictures in another post.  She did a great job and had so much fun using her imagination!

Alex and Gabby spent some sweet time together exploring.

Challenge #14 is about pressing flowers and over the last couple of weeks, we have been collecting wildflowers from the edge of our backyard and woods and pressing them.  They are still currently in my recipe books being pressed, but they will soon be added to our nature journals.  I absolutely love the homemade press that Barb made, so we will be certainly making one of those for our future pressings.

We were able to be outside for 2 hours today!  It was great therapy!  Just as we started to pack up our stuff to come back inside, the rain started to come down and it's not stopped since!

To join in on the Green Hour Challenges, visit Barb at Handbook of Nature Study.

In all places then and in all seasons,

Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings,

Teaching us by most persuasive reasons,

How akin they are to human things.

- Longfellow

The above passage, which was quoted in The Handbook of Nature Study, gave such inspiration to me when I read it.  I know this week's Green Hour Challenge was to begin focus on garden flowers, and I'll get to that too, but if I may, I'd like to take a small detour first.

Over the past couple of weeks we've been spending much time exploring in our backyard and around the edge of the woods and finding and identifying wildflowers.  This was a new nature subject area for us, something we'd never taken such careful notice of.  But with the onset of spring, and with new eyes, my children and I have been seeing them emerging and bursting forth as if carrying a message of hope from their Creator for a new season.

Wild Blue Phlox - Backyard by Creek

"The only right way to begin plant study with young children is through awakening their interest in and love for flowers."

- Handbook of Nature Study, pg. 453

Being in nature continues to provide beautiful moments for my children and I.  Even this evening, my son with wide-eyes and excitement, came carrying a newly found wildflower for us to observe and attempt identification. "Quick Mom, it's a new wildflower, do you know it's name?" he asked.

"The points to be borne in mind are that children like to call things by their names because they are real names, and they also like to use "grownup" names for things; but they do not like to commit to memory names which to them are meaningless."

- Handbook of Nature Study, pg. 456

I believe that if I had just handed my children a list of wildflowers with their photos and names and asked them to carve them into memory, I would have surely been disappointed with their lack of interest and their lack of abilities to remember any of them.

But by learning them one by one "on the hunt", smelling and feeling the petals, observing their beauty, using our guides to identify them, and collecting some of them for pressing, my children can tell you the names of each of the 7 so far that we have identified without any help from me.  And I wasn't even attempting for them to memorize them!  Just the other night, driving home, my daughter excitedly piped out "Mom, look at all that beautiful Field Mustard, the whole huge field is yellow!"  Yes, she remembered and she noticed!

Field Mustard - Backyard by Creek

To see more of our wildflower photos click Nature Photos ~ Spring's Beauty.

Ok, back to our main focus for this week's Green Hour Challenge.  When I think of garden flowers, I'm immediately transported in my mind to my parent's house.  So that's exactly where we took our garden flowers outside time of observing.  I jokingly call my parents "The King and Queen of Flowers"!  They have a simply beautiful property full of dozens of different kinds of garden flowers.  I think both of my parents were born with green thumbs.  We took over 50 photos!  But I'll only share a handful here!  Here are some of the beautiful flowers we observed:

"...every child should feel that every seed planted is a living thing and that it is struggling to grow..."

- Handbook of Nature Study, pg. 455

Bleeding Hearts

 Iris

Tulips (they have multiple varieties of these, but only a few have their blooms still)

Blue Forget-Me-Nots

Some type of special tulip (I can't remember the name right now which seems quite funny that the last flower was a forget-me-not! lol)

Blue Phlox

And my personal favorite garden flower!:

Lily of the Valley - Could there be any sweeter smell in the world!

See the tiny bells?!

Here are some other things we observed:

My parent's beautiful walkway with arbor

Purple Martin House - they were flying all overhead but wouldn't stay still enough for a photo! My Dad was talking to us about how social of a bird they are.  They would swoop down almost like they wanted to land on us.

 My Dad's Barlett Pear tree, this is one of many fruit trees he raises.  For all my childhood I remember my Dad's love of growing fruit trees.  I remember camping out under the starlight in the middle of his mini orchards!

 See the tiny pears forming?

More wildflowers we found there.  We've identified the yellow as some type of wild strawberry, we were unable to identify the purple one yet.

For our challenge we were to pick a flower to focus on.  Today, on the school agenda we will look at all our photos and pick a flower, read a small bit from the Handbook and observe more closely the photos we took and then make a journal entry as well.

Also this last week, we built and planted our raised garden beds, you can read about our experience  with that at Gardening ~ Raised Beds and Perennials.  And finally, Hannah started some perennial seeds indoors and we are anxiously awaiting being able to plant them outdoors!  They are doing quite well.  Almost all of them have sprouted.

Thank you for joining me for my Green Hour Challenge!  Please inspire yourself and your children by joining in on the nature adventures with Barb at Handbook of Nature Study.

"But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.  He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and who leaf does not wither.  Whatever he does propers." Psalm 1:2-3

"Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world." - John Muir

"It is not so much for it's beauty that a forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit." - Robert Louis Stevenson

For this week's Green Hour Challenge we got better acquainted with a couple of beautiful and gentle trees in our backyard.  For this challenge we were to "adopt" a tree to observe and journal about throughout the seasons of the year.

Alex chose an Oak tree.  We're not sure which kind it is yet (pin, red, or white).  Without larger leaves and seeing what the fruit looks like, we weren't able to come to a conclusion.

We were able to collect a tiny spring baby leaf from the Oak, it's so cute!  The little tips are reddish, they look like fire is coming off the ends.  Making us think this might be a Northern Red Oak?

Also, Alex's Oak tree had these stringy looking things hanging all over it which we've come to identify as catkins, or the tree's flowers.  "Could this be part of why poor Hannah is suffering so badly from allergies right now?", we wondered.

Hannah's tree that she chose we couldn't identify at all yet.  The leaves were up to high to see well, but we did take a leaf off of a "baby" tree that was growing right next to it to see if that would help.  I think we'll have to wait for our resident "tree expert" (Grandpa) to help us with our final identifications.  This photo is as close as I could get with the camera to the leaves.  Also the first photo at the very top of this blog entry is the top of her tree.

Both kids made a bark rubbing, filled out Barb's great form that she provided for us, and made a nature journal entry.

Hannah's Work

Alex's Work

They both made specific notes about their tree during observation such as what they saw, heard and felt on their tree.  They attached their leaves to the journal pages, and drew a picture of their tree.  I printed out the photos I took and they labeled those as well for their nature journals.

It will be so much fun to observe these trees through the seasons to see what changes occur.

Other nature study that we have been busy with has been wildflower identification and hatching tadpoles!  I plan to post an entry soon about all of the wildflowers that we have been taking photos of and identifying from our back yard, but here are a couple sneak-peek photos (click on any of them and choose full-size to see a closeup):

"On fine days when it is warm enough to sit out with wraps, why should not tea and breakfast, everything but a hot dinner, be served out of doors? For we are an overwrought generation, running to nerves as a cabbage runs to seed; and every hour spent in the open is a clear gain, tending to the increase of brain power and bodily vigour, and to the lengthening of life itself. They who know what it is to have fevered skin and throbbing brain deliciously soothed by the cool touch of the air are inclined to make a new rule of life, Never be within doors when you can rightly be without." ~ Charlotte Mason Vol. 1 pg. 43

We consulted our Wildflowers and Ferns of Kentucky field guide, but nothing seemed to match.  So, next we found a site on the internet that was very helpful:  Wildflowers of Kentucky.  We loved how they had them broken down by months that they flower.  It made it very easy to find our beautiful flower, Spring Beauty.  We thought it was so COOL to find out that they have an edible tuber that resembles a small potato and has a chestnut-like taste. Native Americans and colonists used them for food.

I've been experimenting with different settings on my camera, and took a closeup of a Spring Beauty that we found today that has 10 petals versus the normal 5.  Does anyone know if this is common for that to happen?  It was beautiful!  We've pressed it to put in our journals.  If I've inserted this photo right, you should be able to click it to enlarge.  Once you click on it, hit "full size" to see it larger.  Can you see the delicate pink anthers?  So pretty.

We also finished up and picked a spot to hang our Nature Prints in Clay.

I have plans this summer to turn this area of our schoolroom into a spot for a nature table.

Tomorrow we will do a journal entry for our adventures this week and also have fun with some great cloud art studies.  Oh, and we've also been having some Dandelion fun too.  I'll be posting about that in a seperate entry soon.

Join the nature adventure fun at The Heart of Harmony!

Whew!  We've had a busy week.  Baseball season has begun for my son.  So I'm a little late this time in getting our Green Hour Challenge posted about.

For this week's challenge, we were to pick a small square area in our backyard to observe everything we could.

Unfortunately, we picked a pretty dead spot in our yard, and found very few things.  We did pull up some grass and observed the root system, and saw a few really tiny bugs.  Perhaps if we'd pulled out the garden trough and started digging we would have found more.  But instead we decided to go on a hunt around our yard to find some things we could look under.

First we found a old log pile and started turning over logs.

We found lots of squishy worms to observe with our lens.  And we also found ants and lots of decaying leaves.

Then we meandered over to a rock pile and started turning over rocks.  The first thing we found were a couple of crickets.

We captured them and spent some time observing and talking about how much, over the winter, we've missed hearing their beautiful song.

THEN, OK this is hard for me to post about, really!  And all my friends who personally know me are going to laugh....we turned over a rock and found a monster!!!!

You know I LOVE nature, BUT there's always one thing that every person has to admit gives them the shivers....and friends this is mine!  Barb, this one's for you....I just knew as soon as I commented to you on your reptile post about my fear of spiders, that the Lord would bring me this one!  We have identified this as a WOLF SPIDER, I think the largest we get here in Kentucky.  I've always called them "miniature tarantulas" though!  Ok, I admit, that it's pretty neat how they carry their babies on their backs.  That's enough about that!

Next, we went looking hunting around down closer to the creek, and look what else we found to observe!!

My Sweet Gabby Rose!

Lastly, we crossed the creek, and went over to the kid's "special" play area.  The kids had made some pretend fishing poles earlier in the week, and put them to the test.  They caught lots of stuff!  We also talked about how their play area down there was like a secret hideaway in a beautiful fairy tale world!  Can you see all the spring green popping up from the wood's floor?!  Yippee!

Down there, we observed this big old tree growing on the side of the ravine and how some of it's roots are on top of the ground.  Neat!

Then we looked up and saw woodpecker holes in this tree.  Hannah informed me that when she's down there playing she sees a White-Breasted Nuthatch fly in and out of there all the time, and hears lots of beeping sounds like babies!  I sure wish we could see them.

Then we wandered up the hill a bit and came upon another "yuck"!    This is a view of the bottom of the skull.  We are pretty sure this was once a Virginia Opossum.  We have lots of those around here, and also lots of Coyotes in Kentucky.  We wondered if that could have been this poor opossums demise?

We have a great nature craft planned that hopefully we will have time for the next couple of days.  So check back soon!!

To participate in fun Green Hour Challenges like this one, visit Barb at The Heart of Harmony.

EDITING TO ADD IN THE LINK to our nature craft:  Nature Prints in Clay